Roles and responsibilities as an expert in geotechnical engineering

This paper discusses the responsibilities of an expert to his or her client and to the court. The expert as an individual is often employed initially to analyse why a project has gone wrong or is going wrong, to help in understanding the responsibilities and contractual consequences and sometimes in developing a claim and the pleadings of a case. In some cases, the expert advises insurers on the validity of a claim. When a case takes on a legal aspect at a later stage, the experts’ duty will shift to the court such that their opinions are no longer just advisory to the client (and perhaps only partially established) but must be expressed independently to help the court, even though the original client will generally pay the expert's fee. There is a fine line between providing technical advice to a client in understanding a case and then presenting expert evidence impartially to help the court to decipher technically difficult matters. Examples of the ways that expert advice is proffered are illustrated through cases including nuclear waste studies, excavation issues, tunnels, foundation failures and landslides.